The Myth of "The Surge"

Although the surge in Iraq may seem like old news, it has a lot of ramifications for the war in Afghanistan, especially since General Patraeus is now in charge of the whole Middle East/Asia theater. Also, it is a wonderful case study of the failings of modern day journalism and commentary. Because there is much to discuss, this will be a long post, so bear with me. I haven't seen any analysis akin in depth to what I am presenting here, and I doubt if you have either.

First, let me begin with the ancient parable of the clan elder and the sun (which I have just made up). Many millenia ago while people were still hunter-gatherers and lived in small clans, a young boy was born who was small and sickly but very smart and observant. Because of his physical limitations he didn't go out hunting with the others, but, being smart and observant, he learned to make himself very useful in the clan. Because of these qualities, when he grew up he became the clan wise man. As such, he was not exposed to the dangers of hunting and after some years he was the oldest one in the clan. As he grew aged and his infirmities increased he became concerned that he soon would not be able to take care of himself, so he called the clan together and told them his story.

"You know, I am the oldest member of the clan and I am concerned that I may not live for much longer. I have always told you the truth before, haven't I?" And the people admitted this was so, not realizing that he had lied to them before, but had done so cleverly when he knew he could not be caught. "I have a secret which you must know."

"After I was born," he continued, "my mother told me that before I was born it was a time of darkness. The wild ravenous beasts who do their killing at night were hunting all the time instead of half the time as they do now. The edible plants scarcely grew and people were just barely surviving unlike now. However, after I was born, my mother told me, when I woke up that thing we call the sun mysteriously appeared in the sky giving us light and warmth." The elder was one who always went to sleep early and woke up shortly before sunrise. "As you know, I always turn in shortly after dark and after I wake up then, and only then, does the sun appear." And no one could remember differently so they believed it must be true.

"So," the elder concluded, "I fear that after my death the time of all darkness will return, bringing much suffering and hardship. The clan should do everything to keep me alive and store food and improve our shelters to prepare for this." And all of the clan agreed that this was indeed a wise plan. So the village elder was well cared for, never having to do a thing for himself for the rest of his life, having every whim catered to. Some years later the elder finally died and there was much fear with wailing and renting of garments. When the first night fell, the clan huddled, arguing about what to do next. The next morning the sun magically appeared and someone suggested that perhaps it would take a while for the sun god (for it must be a god) to realize that his son had left this earth so the clan probably had some time before the time of darkness returned. Well, the sun kept rising every morning and after a few weeks the clan finally realized that they had been conned.

The moral of this story is that even though two things may happen in conjunction (person waking, sun appearing), this does not mean that one causes the other, nor that they are even related, no matter how many times someone swears that they are.

One of the basic failings in popular commentary is the lack of recognition that variables may be dependent or independent and even in dependent variables there may be other factors involved in cause and effect relationships. Nowhere is this more evident than in the popular perception that "the surge" in Iraq was successful. Conservatives have pushed this idea so much that it has become accepted wisdom. Before the election I saw one news anchor (I believe it was Brian Williams) ask Obama something like "Since the surge has been so successful, weren't you wrong to oppose it?"

I have not seen any hard headed analysis of the surge either before or after its implementation. In fact, in the popular press seems to be an almost total ignorance of the major factors of guerilla war and successful counter-insurgency strategy. It is as if there has been a collective national amnesia about the lessons learned in Vietnam. There is a whole lot of experience and evidence about what works and what doesn't work. There is at least one journal devoted to counter-insurgency warfare and a number of academics who have spent their careers studying the subject but I never saw any of them consulted by the popular press. Patraeus, in addition to his own background, had an Australian expert as an advisor, but I never saw an independent expert evaluating the surge. For anyone interested, I recommend War in the Shadows by Asprey, a two volume history of guerilla war, dating back to pre-Roman times, as a good place to start. I have read other books that I can recommend if you are interested.

Everything we know about guerilla war and the war in Iraq tell us that the surge, by itself, could not have been successful. First, you need a soldier to guerilla ratio of about 10 to 1 to be assured of success. If you don't have that ratio you need the overwhelming support of the local populace so they will not give aid and comfort to the guerillas and will, instead, provide the anti-guerilla forces with valuable intelligence. The main problem of counter-insurgency warfare is not lack of firepower, it is finding the enemy and depriving him of sanctuary. Also, to be successful, the anti-guerilla forces (i.e., the government) need to be legitimate and at least moderately just in the eyes of the populace. There are other tactical military approaches, too, that may apply, but they need not be considered here for the issue at hand.

A good example of the opposite is the guerilla war in Yugoslavia in World War II. Originally there were two anti-German groups, the Chetniks and Tito's pro-communist partisans. The two groups feuded and the Chetniks sided with the Nazis against Tito's group. So Tito's guerillas had to fight both the Nazis and other Yugoslavs. Tito started out with just a few thousand followers and rifles, no heavy weapons. The Nazis had tanks, planes, and about 100,000 troops. The Nazis were utterly ruthless. If a German soldier were killed while patrolling a village, for example, the Germans would retaliate by killing 100 men from that village. An yet by the end of the war, Tito's guerilla group had swelled to over 200,000 soldiers and literally had the German army on the run. This shows the total failure of the military only option. There are many other similar examples throughout history.

Let's take a look at the situation in Iraq pre and post surge. Before the surge US troop levels were approximately 130,000; after the surge they were approximately 155,000. We don't know how many Sunni guerillas there were, but considering how many signed up for the US backed militia, Sons of Iraq, (up to 70,000) I think it is safe to assume that there were at least 20,000 part-time guerillas. Estimates of the Shiite Mahdi Army were that it contained about 60,000. Even assuming the Iraqi Army was effective (and only a couple of battalions were by all accounts), that addds another 70,000 to 100,000 troops to the anti-guerilla side (the lower number at the start of the surge, the higher number at the end).Thus, as we can see, adding 25,000 more US soldiers shouldn't have made much of a difference. The guerilla side would have had about 80,000 and the anti-guerilla side would have gone from abour 230,000 to 255,000, nowhere near the ratio needed. Although a lot of these numbers are estimates, it doesn't change the basic conclusion because the ratio is nowhere near large enough so that even if we overstate the guerilla strength the problem still remains. Additionally, these figures overstate the Iraqi Army and don't take into account that many of the 155,000 US soldiers were support, not infantry.

Next, let's take a look at it from the perspective of a guerilla. According to the US Army, 80% of its casualties were due to IED's, or roadside bombs. What did it take to produce those casualties? You need someone to fashion a bomb out of an old artillery shell (of which there are hundreds of thousands in Iraq since US forces failed to secure them after the invasion). Then you would probably need a team of 3 or 4 guys to go out late at night, dig a hole in the road or plant the bomb along the side of the road in some trash or debris. Then you would need one guy to stay within range of the remote control and wait until a US patrol comes by and then he pushes the button to detonate the bomb. As you can see, this is a very low risk operation requiring little time, effort or manpower. A dozen teams a night, especially before Hummers were given better armor, could easily result in 100 dead US soldiers a month. So, I ask you, how could a 20% increase in US troops, spread over the whole country, stop that?

Now let's look at it from the non-military perspective. Was the Iraqi government seen as legitimate and was the populace on our side? We know the answer to that was clearly no and no. While Maliki's negotiation of the status of forces agreement at the end of 2008 and the recent elections have greatly increased the government's legitimacy, at the start of the surge and throughout almost all of the surge, Maliki was seen as a US puppet, the Sunnis boycotted the government, and Sadr's followers were violently opposed. At a rough estimate, I think it would be fair to say that 40% of the population were strongly opposed to the Maliki government, another 40% or so were indifferent or considered him an ineffective stooge, and he had the active support of about 20%. If anyone has better numbers on this I would like to see them. One of the problems with Iraq is the paucity of meaningful information. How about US forces popularity and the likelihood that they would get aid and support from the local population? There have been a lot of polls done on this and the results are very consistent. From 75-80% of Iraqis want the US to leave and approximately 50% of Iraqis think it is okay to help the guerillas. Considering that we are very popular with the Kurds, among the non-Kurdish population these numbers are probably even much higher. Thus, as you can see, the major components of a successful anti-guerilla campaign are not present. Could it just be that it wasn't the surge at all that was the reason for the decrease in violence? Remember that waking up in the morning doesn't cause the sun to rise, or if you work all night the sun rise doesn't cause you to wake up.

What, then, are other variables that may have led to the lessening of violence? Approximately two years ago, at the beginning of the surge, Sadr's militia had a horrific gun battle with another Shiite group in a major mosque in, as I recall, Najaf (although the location is not that important). A number of innocents were killed and Sadr declared a cease fire because it was a terrible public relations disaster for him and his supporters. Although some small rogue groups defied him, this removed about 60,000 militia from participating in conflict.

Most of the civilian casualties in Iraq were due to death squads, both Sunni and Shia, which ethnically cleansed mixed neighborhoods. Those who weren't murdered were forced to flee their homes. Christians were expecially persecuted until most all of them fled the country. The result was that approximately 2 million Iraqis fled to other countries and approximately 2.5 million fled to other areas of Iraq, abandoning mixed neighborhoods. Where there used to be Sunnis and Shias living together you now had Sunni only and Shia only neighborhoods, patrolled by their own militias. This meant that 1 out of every 6 Iraqis was displaced from their homes in the space of about two years. In the US, that would be the equivalent of 50 million people forced to leave their homes and move somewhere else. Iraqi on Iraqi violence dropped precipitiously because ethnic cleansing was completed, not because of anything the surge did.

Another factor was the previously mentioned Sunni militas armed by the US. Previous US policies practically invited the insurgency. By disbanding the 400,000 man army and then outlawing the Baathists from employment, we created a vast army of unemployed, angry and armed young Sunnis who had no reason to support us and a lot of reasons to dislike us. The militias gave them a good, steady paycheck.When local tribal chiefs approached US forces in the summer of 2007 with the idea for the militias, it was maybe the best thing we could have done, much more important than the surge. And it wasn't supported by the Sunnis because of the surge but because of the excesses of the local Al-Aqaeda forces. The nihilism and excesses of Al-Qaeda may be the best thing we have going for us in our battle against them.

Thus, as you can see, the Sunni militias, Sadr's decision for a cease fire, and the completion of ethnic cleansing were most likely the major causes for the decrease in violence in Iraq. There is probably another causal factor, but it is only logical conjecture. People in Iraq can read newspapers and watch satellite TV. By the end of 2007 it should have been clear to any interested Iraqi that Bush was unpopular, the American people disapproved of the war by big margins, and the Democrats, who were anti-war, were likely to win the 2008 election. Also, they knew that the UN mandate for US occupation expired at the end of 2008 and that the US would have to negotiate a new agreement by then. If you were an Iraqi insurgent, wouldn't it make sense to lie low for a while and see what happens, figuring the US might leave soon even if you did nothing?

Finally, I keep asking, if the surge worked, where are the metrics? If it was the surge that reduced the insurgency, then we must have been killing and capturing insurgents at a much higher rate than before the surge. Having been in military intelligence, I know that the military keeps more statistics than a baseball junkie. They know how many patrols were done and by which units. They will have statistics on how many people were arrested, killed, etc., etc. During the Vietnam War the military announced enemy body counts after every battle and totals for evey month. And yet, from Iraq we have seen nothing. How many insurgents were killed and/or captured for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008? I haven't seen any figures, have you? We have seen absolutely no solid evidence that the surge worked. Next time you hear somebody say the surge worked, just ask them, how many more insurgents were killed and captured, on average, per month, after the surge compared to before the surge. I'll be waiting for that answer.